Mexico’s industrial production fell three times more than analysts forecast in March, reinforcing expectations that the central bank will cut interest rates for the second time since 2009 later this year.

Brazil campaigned hard to get the top job at the World Trade Organization this week but behind closed doors even it acknowledges that the WTO’s main mission – pushing forward in global trade talks – looks for the moment like a lost cause.

APMT prepares for high growth marketsAlthough global container volumes are not predicted to grow as rapidly over the next five years as they have over the past decade, high growth emerging markets will require higher levels of productivity and rely heavily on expanded inland services

The past few years have been challenging for the global economy but it seems as though the derivatives industry sustained more than its share of insults and injuries over the past year or so. Still reeling from the trauma of MF Global in October of 2011, exchange-traded volume went into its first nosedive in decades.

Perhaps the only positive for the year was that mergers and acquisitions at both the macro and micro level imply that innovation and creativity are still powerful industry drivers. That in turn suggests that the creative dynamism that has characterized the derivatives industry for so many years still has some innings to go.

The overall mix of the $8.2 billion of merger consideration being paid by ICE is approximately 67% shares and 33% cash. The transaction value of $33.12 represents a 37.7% premium over NYSE Euronext’s closing share price on Wednesday. The transaction is expected to close in the second half of 2013, subject to regulatory approvals.

Investors see plenty of upsides in a takeover by ICE, which would create a powerhouse in cross-asset trading and reduce Nyse Euronext’s reliance on stagnating, hyper-competitive equity markets. Nyse’s share of trading on stocks listed on the Big Board has shrunk from 82% to just 21% in a fiercely competitive market. For ICE, a tie-up with Nyse Euronext will give the energy trading bourse a leg-up into the expanding market for over-the-counter derivatives contracts and the geographical outreach to take on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange.

The two companies have already inked an agreement for Nyse Liffe to move its clearing operations to ICE Clear Europe. The implications of the deal for Nyse Liffe’s plans to move its clearing from LCH.Clearnet to a newly-constructed inhouse CCP by June 2013 have not been spelled out.

The combined company is expected to save up to $450 million through cost synergies in the second full year post closing. ICE has successfully integrated more than a dozen acquisitions in the last decade. An earlier bid by ICE to take over Nyse Euronext in tandem with Nasdaq OMX was nixed by the US Justice Department on anti-competitive grounds. Observers see no similar objections being raised to a straight merger, with Nasdaq OMX removed from the equation. FinExtra 20.12.2012

Given the sweeping changes hitting exchanges on the back of growing regulation and falling equity volumes in Europe, the combined entity would increase its chance of success, dominating European energy, commodity and short-dated fixed income trading, as well as OTC credit clearing; and leap-frogging Deutsche Boerse to become the world’s third-largest exchange group, with a combined market value of $15.2 billion.

However, not all divisions would benefit. Whilst a tie up with ICE would enable London-based Liffe to compete more effectively with CME Group in both trading and clearing of OTC products, for Euronext the future looks less certain. According to NYSE’s investor presentation explaining the deal, ICE “intends to explore an IPO of Euronext if market conditions allow and if European policy makers are supportive.” See full article at TABB Forum 20.12.2012.

ICE and NYSE Euronext agree that their wholly owned subsidiaries, ICE Clear Europe Limited and LIFFE Administration and Management have entered into a clearing services agreement pursuant to which ICE Clear Europe will provide clearing services to the London market of NYSE Liffe (“NYSE Liffe”). The clearing services agreement will allow NYSE Liffe to transition seamlessly from their current clearing arrangements. See full article at Bob´s Guide 20.12.2012

At this time last year, NYSE Euronext and Deutsche Bourse were more than midway through a year-long merger push that would have resulted in an exchange operator with an estimated $16 billion in combined market capital and a near monopoly on the European exchange-traded derivatives business. Consolidation, it seemed, was the key to competing in the global exchange landscape.

But dreams of consolidation, synergies and economies of scale were quickly dashed. The two biggest cross-border exchange deals — NYSE/DB merger and the proposed merger of the Singapore Exchange (SGX) and the Australian Securities Exchange (ASX) — were blocked by regulators, and the LSE’s attempt to buy the Toronto Stock Exchange (TMX), which also failed initially due to reluctant regulators, eventually lost out to a domestic bid from Maple Group Acquisition Corp. earlier this year. see full article at TABB Forum 12.12.2012.

Hong Kong Exchanges and Clearing Limited (HKEx) and LME Holdings Limited (LME Holdings), the parent company of The London Metal Exchange Limited (LME), are pleased to announce that the acquisition of the entire issued ordinary share capital of LME Holdings by HKEx has completed today.

Completion was effected by the delivery of the relevant court orders to the Registrar of Companies for England and Wales.

The transaction brings together the leading operator of exchanges and clearing houses in Asia, with the world’s leading non-ferrous base metals trading venue.

Charles Li, Chief Executive of HKEx said, “We are delighted that, as of today, the LME is formally part of the HKEx group. We are confident that this partnership will deliver enormous benefits over time as we leverage our relationships and knowledge to build on LME’s strong global position.”

Martin Abbott, Chief Executive of the LME said, “The LME will remain the world’s foremost base metals exchange thanks to HKEx’s position in Asia, its infrastructure and resources. We begin a new chapter today but the LME is more secure than at any point in its 135-year history.”

FRANKFURT – Several top steelmakers are sitting out ThyssenKrupp’s auction of its U.S. and Brazilian mills and there appears little interest in the latter, suggesting the German firm may fall well short of its $9 billion asking price.

Foreign market leaders such as Fidessa, Direct Edge and Navatar are challenging local providers in the race to meet the booming region’s needs. The growth in size and sophistication of LatAm capital markets has both fueled and been fueled by the implementation of high-tech financial infrastructure in the region, as the hardware and software that have been the foundation …

Perseus Telecom, a global connectivity provider, today announces the acquisition of ETradeLab, a Sao Paulo-based financial technology provider of hosting, managed connectivity, order routing and trade monitoring support. The purchase comes at a time of global demand for efficient trading systems with low-latency connectivity and local support models suited for banks, hedge funds and proprietary firms.

The joint company expects to add significant value to its services by tightly integrating them. Combining ETradeLab’s hosting solutions with Perseus’ ultra-low latency networks will provide cost effective, efficient and valuable network solutions for its customers. Anticipating and responding to innovative demands while having pricing sensitivities further led to this agreement.

“Our purchase of ETradeLab shines light on the accelerating market growth in Brazil, Peru, Chile, Panama and Colombia where capital markets require ultra-fast, reliable connections to mitigate risk and to provide worldwide reach,” states Dr. Jock Percy, Chief Executive of Perseus Telecom. “Incorporating ETradeLab into our brand was an easy decision given its expertise in the market and trade monitoring services.”

Effective immediately, Marcos Guimarães, founder of ETradeLab, is President of Perseus Telecom, Brazil. “It is a thrill to be part of Perseus Telecom’s top-tier management team. Perseus brings innovation and high performance networks at fair prices due to its strong portfolio that allow customers to increase revenues while reducing operating costs,” states Guimarães. “The LATAM region’s continuing market growth requires such building blocks for optimum time-to-market and even faster development; Perseus has the DNA to deliver them allied to ETradeLab’s local market knowledge. I’m ready for the challenge and can’t wait to start working with our customers.”

The expansion of Perseus’ Brazilian presence follows its recent Global Telecoms Business award for “Best Innovation,” related directly to building the fastest connectivity from London to BM&F BOVESPA, Brazil. Prior to the award, Perseus announced the fastest route to BM&F BOVESPA with its strategic partner GlobeNet.

“Our recent announcements and awards with regards to Brazil and South America have indicated the firm is taking a permanent and local stake in the region and we have done this with the valuable acquisition of ETradeLab,” says Percy. “We welcome Marcos Guimarães as President of Perseus do Brazil and will continue our path of commitment to providing the lowest latency networks globally whilst delivering intelligent and cost efficiencies.”

The Singapore Stock Exchange has denied rumours that it is engaged in merger talks with the London Stock Exchange.

Shares in the LSE shot up in late trading yesterday as rumours swirled that the London bourse was discussing a merger with SGX.

Both the LSE and SGX had to pull out of prospective mergers with the Toronto Stock Exchange and the Australian Stock Exchange respectively last year as the deals ran aground over national interest concerns.

In a statement released today, SGX says: “SGX has not engaged in talks with the LSE on a potential merger. However, we are open to collaborations and partnerships which may benefit our shareholders and the company.”

The two exchanges last week confirmed plans for the cross-listing of each others products on an international board of blue chip stocks, and are also rumoured to have discussed co-operation in the clearing of OTC swaps transactions. Earlier this year. The two also got together last year over the prospect of making a combined bid for the London Metal Exchange, which has since fallen into the hands of Hong Kong Exchange & Clearing.

“The acquisition of QuantHouse will provide our clients with access to exchange pricing globally, including securities valuations and portfolio analytics, throughout all our desktop and enterprise solutions. In addition, the extensive capabilities QuantHouse brings will enable S&P Capital IQ to build our own unique real-time monitors, derived data sets and analytics,” said Lou Eccleston, President of S&P Capital IQ and S&P Indices. “As the foundation for our growing Enterprise Solutions business, QuantHouse will enable us to offer one integrated low-latency feed for all our data, including fundamental, fixed-income, equity and derivatives.”

“We are very excited to be a part of S&P Capital IQ,” said Pierre-Francois Filet, chairman and co-founder, QuantHouse. “Together, we can focus on developing a new generation of alpha-generation tools, low-latency transaction infrastructure and integrated low-latency data feeds to maximize offerings and strengthen S&P Capital IQ’s competitive positioning.”

This purchase, along with the recently announced acquisition of R2 Financial Technologies and the expected acquisition of CMA later this year, provides S&P Capital IQ with the components necessary to offer its clients the most comprehensive market data and risk analytics platforms in the industry.

Following the acquisition, QuantHouse’s 90 employees, based in Paris, London and New York, will become a critical component to S&P Capital IQ’s global growth strategy as part of the Enterprise Solutions unit. In the short term, its products and services will continue to be sold as standalone feeds and applications, although all S&P Capital IQ and S&P Indices content will gradually be consolidated into QuantHouse feeds.

Nyse also hopes to use the deal to plug in more trading clients to its network of Global Liquidity Centres, which are based in the US, Europe, Tokyo and Toronto.

Fixnetix will continue to operate as an independent company but work “where appropriate” with Nyse technologies to offer customers integrated services. Meanwhile, both parties will seek to benefit from streamlining the process for designing and installing elements of complex global trading infrastructures.

Nyse Euronext has quickly turned its focus to technology revenues in the wake of the failed Deutsche Börse merger. After posting record fourth quarter revenues for the Information Services and Technology Solutions segment of $127 million, the company recently revealed plans to double annual tech revenues to $1 billion by 2015.

Michael Geltzeiler, Group Executive Vice President and CFO of NYSE Euronext added, “Today’s announcement further demonstrates NYSE Euronext’s commitment to using our strong capital position to create immediate strategic value that delivers greater opportunities for the company, our diverse global customers and the broader marketplace. Acquiring this strategic interest in Fixnetix allows us to better leverage our combined technology presence to reach more customers in more locations.”

“We at Fixnetix are thrilled with the investment from NYSE Euronext as this will enable us to expand our U.S. coverage and expand into Asia,” said Hugh Hughes, Chief Executive of Fixnetix. “Fixnetix and NYSE Technologies share common philosophies of working with our customer base to increase efficiency and reduce costs.”

Deutsche Börse has taken a similar road, setting out plans this week to create a new business unit that will be responsible for all data and information technology activities as it seeks to win customers and boost revenues.

The total market capitalization of companies listed on the two bourses stood at $3.67 trillion, or 280 trillion yen, at the end of September, placing them only behind the New York Stock Exchange.

The two bourses will merge into a holding company, tentatively named Japan Exchange Group Inc.

TSE President Atsushi Saito will become chief executive officer of the holding company and OSE President Michio Yoneda will be its chief operating officer, they said.

“We are confident that this merger will be the cornerstone in reviving Japan’s economy,” Saito said at a joint press conference held in Tokyo.

In the run-up to the merger, privately held TSE will buy OSE shares for 480,000 yen per share through a public tender offer to acquire a 66.6 percent stake in OSE by next summer.

OSE, a publicly traded company, will be the surviving company in the merger at a ratio valuing TSE at around 1.7 times OSE.

The resulting company will be listed on the First Section of the Tokyo Stock Exchange and run four subsidiaries for stock trading, derivatives trading, clearing services and regulatory operations, according to the bourses.

The merger decision comes amid an international reconfiguration of stock exchanges. NYSE Euronext, which owns the New York Stock Exchange, has agreed to merge with Deutsche Boerse AG by the end of this year.

It also comes as the Tokyo and Osaka bourses are engaged in fierce competition with global rivals such as the bourses in China and South Korea.

“Unless we increase (market) liquidity, there will be companies that will head to overseas bourses,” Saito said, adding, “More than just preventing such moves, we intend to attract them.”

The combination of the TSE with its focus on actual shares and the OSE on derivatives will result in “great synergy” with the ability to provide a variety of financial products, cut costs for running systems and enhance global competitiveness, the two bourse operators said.

While the initial news of the bourses’ intention to merge broke in March, nine months elapsed before the two sides formalized an agreement on Tuesday.

On the length of time they required, Yoneda said, “We have a history of operating separately for 133 years, and there was also the difference of being listed and unlisted, but we’ve cleared each step one by one and now we’re at a starting point,” adding they want to speed up the process from now.

The announcement was generally well received by analysts and other key figures in Japan.

“A bourse with a good balance between cash equities and derivatives would emerge,” said Sadakazu Osaki of Nomura Research Institute, calling it a starting point to compete with other Asian and European bourses.

“Listed companies and investors may not see the merits immediately, but in the long run, it would help avoid the risk of bourses stagnating in Japan,” he said. Meanwhile, Chief Cabinet Secretary Osamu Fujimura said the government “welcomes” the planned merger.

“It’s an important challenge for our country’s financial market to try to strengthen its competitiveness through the enhancement of its presence as an international financial center,” he said at a press conference.

Raj Mahajan, president of SunGard’s global trading business, said: “The economy in Latin America continues to grow at an exceptional pace. Led by Brazil, which has achieved an annual average growth of 3.7% over the last ten years, (nearly twice that of the US), the boom includes Mexico, Chile, Columbia and Peru. SunGard is helping Latin American trading firms capitalize on the change and growth in that region, by providing low latency execution to help them compete in the global race for liquidity with greater transparency, efficiency and access to network connectivity.”

The ten trends SunGard has identified as shaping Latin American trading are:

2. Brazil’s markets are going completely electronic, increasing firms’ ability to more efficiently and more quickly access liquidity. As a result volumes have skyrocketed; a 400% increase in activity in the last decade.

3. Demand for international order flow is high as volumes are rising in emerging markets: Brazil is ranked the fourth largest emerging market according to a recent article.

4. The sell-side in Latin America is consolidating; large international players are buying local brokers to quickly increase their presence and credibility.

5. FIX connectivity is increasing: As firms receive and execute more order flow internationally, the adoption of FIX has taken hold in Latin America, helping to efficiently connect buy- and sell-side firms.

6. Trading volumes are increasing across the region and firms need real-time data and analytical tools for greater transparency into market movements. It is predicted that Brazil will see a 4.9% increase in equity market performance in 2011, according to a recent report. From 2006-2010, fund flows into Brazil have totaled $10 billion.

7. As more international investors want exposure to LatAm markets, the networks into and out of these markets becomes more important. Local firms and international players are investing in telecommunications infrastructure to ensure bandwidth and reliability for their trading networks.

8. With major exchanges allowing third party software firms direct access to exchanges, traders have more network connectivity options and can now take advantage of independent software vendors to provide their technology platforms.

9. As LatAm trading volumes skyrocket, the demand for financial information within the region is growing. In terms of financial market data and news, Latin America is second only to the Asian nations in allocating more budget for this resource.

Danielle Tierney, junior analyst at Aite, said, “Networks are the key to sustaining growth in Latin America. Approximately 25 percent of the volume traded in Latin America is international, driving the search for new sources of liquidity and establishing connections to powerful global networks.”

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In part three, we examine secret code and corporate evolution as two of the root causes for data quality problems.Root Cause Number (5) Five: Corporate EvolutionChange is good… except for data quality
An organizations undergoes business process change to improve itself. Good, right? Prime examples include:

Company expansion into new markets

New partnership deals

New regulatory reporting laws

Financial reporting to a parent company

Downsizing

If data quality is defined as “fitness for purpose,” what happens when the purpose changes? It’s these new data uses that bring about changes in perceived level of data quality even though underlying data is the same. It’s natural for data to change. As it does, the data quality rules, business rules and data integration layers must also change.

Root Cause Attack Plan

Data Governance – By setting up a cross-functional data governance team, you will always have a team who will be looking at the changes your company is undergoing and considering its impact on information. In fact, this should be in the charter of a data governance team.

Communication – Regular communication and a well-documented metadata model will make the process of change much easier.

Tool Flexibility – One of the challenges of buying data quality tools embedded within enterprise applications is that they may not work in ALL all enterprise applications. When you choose tools, make sure they are flexible enough to work with data from any application and that the company is committed to flexibility and openness.

Root Cause Number (6) Six: Secret Code
Databases rarely start begin their life empty. The starting point is typically a data conversion from some previously existing data source. The problem is that while the data may work perfectly well in the source application, it may fail in the target. It’s difficult to see all the custom code and special processes that happen beneath the data unless you profile.

Root Cause Attack Plan

Profile Early and Often – Don’t assume your data is fit for purpose because it works in the source application. Profiling will give you an exact evaluation of the shape and syntax of the data in the source. It also will let you know how much work you need to do to make it work in the target.

Apply Reusable Data Quality Tools When Possible – Rather than custom code in the application, a better strategy is to let data quality tools apply standards. Data quality tools will apply corporate standards in a uniform way, leading to more accurate sharing of data.

This post is an excerpt from a white paper available here. More to come on this subject in the days ahead.